


Mutual stupidity

by TetrodotoxinB



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Again, But he'll be fine, Dom!Danny, M/M, Mutual Pining, No Sex, Pre-Slash, Steve Gets Shot, but then we all already knew that, d/s verse, sub drop but different, sub!Steve, they're both idiots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-09-24 05:17:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17094611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TetrodotoxinB/pseuds/TetrodotoxinB
Summary: Steve's a sub and Danny's a dom, but they're definitely both straight..... right?





	Mutual stupidity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tarialdarion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tarialdarion/gifts).



> Thanks bunches to [icoulddothisallday](https://archiveofourown.org/users/icoulddothisallday/pseuds/icoulddothisallday) and [ChibiSquirt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChibiSquirt/pseuds/ChibiSquirt) for letting me shout at them a lot and for beta work. All remaining mistakes are because I edited things after they read it and messed it up.

Running right up to the edge of a drop isn’t anything new to Steve; he’s pushed the boundaries of what he can handle since his dad sent him to the Army Navy Academy. But Freddie and then John, both dead within the week, and Steve knows something’s got to give soon. Fortunately, the mouthy little detective from New Jersey he’s picked up just bleeds the kind of easy confidence that’s enough to keep Steve just this side of functional. It doesn’t hurt that he seems incapable of keeping his hands to himself.

Unfortunately, it’s not five minutes after they put Hesse in the water that Steve’s shaking so hard he has to sit down. 

“How long since someone put you down properly?” Danny asks.

Steve’s heard that question a lot in his life, but never without a patronizing tone, never without the suggestion that he’s not capable of making his own choices or caring for himself. If he weren’t about to have a seizure sometime in the next hour Steve might comment on it, but he doesn’t know Danny well enough to have that conversation right now. Maybe he won’t ever.

“Since before Hesse murdered my dad,” he answers.

Danny pulls a face — a mix of disappointment and legitimate concern — and reaches down to hoist Steve off the ground. “Come on, pal. We gotta get you a clinic.”

When Danny hands off on Steve to the clinic personnel, putting his contact info down under ‘emergency contact,’ Steve isn’t sure what to make of it.

“Call me when you get your sea legs again, _boss_ ,” Danny says.

Steve wants to laugh, make a smartass comment about the longevity of Danny’s employment with an attitude like that, but all he manages to do is flap his hand in Danny’s direction.

Danny laughs and pats Steve on the leg roughly, clearly more out of anger than any sort of affection. “Make sure when you stick him you use the really big needles,” he tells the nurse. And then he’s gone.

*****

Danny’s sitting at what he has decided is his desk when Steve strides through the door at exactly eight in the morning. He looks alert, especially so for someone who looks like he’s both been recently mauled by a mountain lion as well as having one serious case of post-drop hangover. 

“Do they not believe in sick days in the Army?”

Steve grins, his lip still swollen from where Danny punched him the day before, and the bruises around his eye crinkling up like it doesn’t hurt. “Navy, Danny. And why take a sick day when you’re not sick?”

Danny considers tossing his cup of coffee on Steve and walking back out the door. “You were near-catatonic from a drop yesterday, and now you’re magically fine?”

Steve shrugs, further infuriating Danny. He’s clearly just been press-ganged into working with a complete lunatic, which doesn’t bode well for Danny living long enough to see Grace grow up. 

“Fine, whatever. It’s your health. At least tell me you have someone to see regularly. I don’t want to be dragging you into a clinic a couple times a month because you’re too busy getting me shot at to deal with boring shit like drops.”

Steve smiles viciously. “‘Course I do, Danno. Don’t worry about it.”

“Don’t call me that, and I’m not. It’s me I’m worrying about, you gigantic walking insurance liability. You’re gonna get me killed one day when you drop in the field and I’m stuck dragging your limp and moronic body to safety.”

But by the time Danny is done Steve is already in his office with the door closed. 

*****

Steve had always heard that adjusting to civilian life was hard for subs, even those with a partner. But it comes as a surprise when he realizes nearly three weeks into working with Danny that he hasn’t even thought about finding someone to go down with. He’s not losing focus, not having migraines, and his appetite is fine. He feels… settled.

It’s weird. Steve’s never once felt like this more than forty-eight hours after going down. 

It doesn’t take a detective to know what’s going on. Danny, with his constant barrage of opinions, advice, and pointed observations, has filled the space in his life that was normally taken up with COs and orders and the occasional assigned dom. Add to that the way that Danny casually calls Steve “babe” and touches him more than he’s been touched since he was a kid, and Steve isn’t sure what to do with himself.

Sure, he’d been assigned a dom partner through the Navy — he’d been paired with Freddie off and on since BUD/S — but it had never been anything more than a hand on the back of the neck or some light orders they shared in down time. Nothing like what he has with Danny. Nothing like what he thinks about when he’s alone. Nothing like he’s trying not to imagine when he takes another frigid, three minute shower.

It’s not like it would work, Steve reminds himself. Danny has always been free with his commentary on the women they see. But only the women. He wouldn’t want another man, especially not a headstrong, control-freak like Steve. 

Steve really needs to find a partner to take the edge off, at least sexually. But somehow that never happens.

*****

Okay so Danny doesn’t want to be _that guy_ but it isn’t like Steve is objecting to the way Danny tries to keep him level. Logically, Danny knows Steve has had assigned doms all throughout his career so it’s not like Steve doesn’t have a basis for it. And Danny’s partner, Grace, had been a sub. It was professional. It _is_ professional.

But Danny sure as hell wishes it wasn’t.

Bratty, stubborn, opinionated subs aren’t most people’s first choice, but clearly Rachel, and now Steve, prove that they’re Danny’s. It’s not worth considering, he knows. Steve seems content with their work relationship as it is, and Danny knows that a military man like Steve wouldn’t go in for anything with another man, especially not when it could cost him his career. 

All that’s left is for Danny’s dick to get on board with that reality. 

*****

“The last signal we picked up off the sat phone was coming from Pelekunu Preserve on the north shore of Molokai. We can drive in partway, but the road ends about five miles from the coordinates,” Chin explains.

“Helo?” Kono asks.

Steve shakes his head. “They’d know we were coming a mile away. There’s no regular air traffic out that far. We’ll need to hike in.”

“Oh, you mean you can’t just ride a horse in?” Danny asks, sounding for all the world like he might actually ride one, though Steve knows just how much he hates horses. “I thought that was standard off-road transportation on the islands.”

“Not there, Danny. The hills are too steep and the paths are pretty muddy this time of year. We’d risk a fall. Better to go in light.”

Danny grimaces. “Lovely.” 

*****

“We should be getting close,” Steve whispers.

“Thank fuck. I’m gonna get malaria from all the damn mosquitos.”

“There’s no malaria on the islands, Danny,” Steve admonishes, and Danny can’t help but grumble because there may not be malaria but he’s gonna have mosquito bites on his balls, even through his pants. “I’m gonna head north around the camp. You go southeast and I’ll meet you on the other side of the ridge. Once we scout it out we can radio back to Chin and Kono.”

Danny nods and Steve heads off, crouching like a goddamn ninja in the leaves. Danny crunches along, not really sure how the hell it is that Steve can walk through a freaking jungle without making a racket with all the leaf litter. 

_Pop, pop, pop._

Gunfire never sounds as sharp or loud as it does on TV unless it’s high calibre or you’re right up on it. As it is, it’s barely loud enough for Danny to hear over his own footsteps. He pauses, waiting for more sound, for return fire, for something to give him a better direction. 

_Pop, pop._

His path takes through the center of the encampment, something he will probably recognize as dumb as fuck after the fact. But Steve is shouting and popping off rounds, and that is never a good combination, because if Steve can take someone out he doesn’t bother with talking to them. Out here there’s nothing and no one to bargain with, no reason to try and talk them down. 

No reason, unless he’s buying time, which Steve never does unless he has to.

There’s no element of surprise when Danny comes charging up from behind, and they’re firing before he can line up a shot. He takes cover behind a tree and listens to the approaching footsteps.

Someone pops off another couple rounds and Steve yells, “Now Danny!”

Steve’s word is always good and Danny jumps out blind. There are three of them, but they’re on the ground while Steve unloads the rest of his clip in their general direction. It’s enough time that Danny can get to Steve.

“What the hell happened to recon only?” Danny asks. 

“Dog heard me,” Steve answers, his mouth set in a firm line. “Come on. I got one and winged another. We’ve got a momentary head start.”

Danny would beg to differ on the meaning of the word “head start.” They aren’t more than twenty yards ahead of the remaining three idiots. One clear line of sight and it’s over.

But Steve isn’t running. Danny looks back to see him limping along, dragging a bloody leg, his thumb pressed over a seeping hole in his thigh.

“Fuck! Steve!”

“It’s nothing. Come on, we gotta get out of here.”

“Yes, obviously we gotta get out of here, but you could at least lean on me you big idiot. Come on, we’ll move faster,” Danny chides.

It’s a testament to seriousness of their situation that Steve complies without argument. 

The ridgeline is up ahead and then they have to somehow go down without sliding all the way to the bottom. Danny’s not sure how well that’s going to work out. But just as they crest the hill, Steve points off to the right where there’s an old trail.

“That way,” he says.

“It’s washed out,” Danny argues.

“Yeah, I know.”

Danny sighs and hauls Steve off toward the small mudslide. They stay entirely off the trail, making their way over leaves and branches. It’s not perfect, and someone with a small amount of know-how in tracking could find them with their eyes closed, but Steve must be banking on these city kids not having earned that particular merit badge.

“Under here,” Steve says, and Danny finds himself wedged under the lip of the trail. The top is intact, but the underside washed out relatively recently. So either these idiots will walk over them and collapse several hundred pounds of wet dirt onto their heads, or they’ll use what little sense they have and go around, bypassing Steve and Danny entirely. Danny is not optimistic.

In the meantime, Steve quietly breaks out the first aid kit that he has and passes Danny an Israeli bandage. Danny wraps and twists, wraps and twists, trying his hardest to ignore the way Steve’s breathing hitches and his fingers dig into the soft dirt everytime he adds pressure to the gunshot wound. Steve’s going to have to hike out on this. It’s gonna be slow and awful, plenty of time for infection to fester. Danny’s not-optimism turns into outright pessimism. 

But Danny’s feelings on the matter aside, the voices of their idiot pursuers do eventually fade into the distance. Danny would be pleased if Steve wasn’t going to be so smug about how well his plan worked. 

“Come on. There’s no signal down here. We need to get up on the ridgeline to call Chin.”

Danny hauls Steve up, taking more of his weight than he had when they had crawled into this mudhole. As they slip and slide up to the path, Danny can feel the way that tremors run the length of Steve’s body. They plod along in silence, and Danny hopes that it’s the pain that’s got Steve shaking like this, but he knows that Steve’s pain tolerance is far higher than this.

“Let’s try here,” Steve says. 

Danny eases him down onto a fallen tree, and Steve pulls out the phone, hitting the speed dial for Chin’s cell. 

“Chin. We found them. The coordinates were good but they took off east along the ridgeline north of the encampment. We need medevac,” Steve relays.

Danny can’t make out exactly what it is that Chin says, but he can hear the irritation in his voice that precedes Steve admitting, “I got shot in the leg. The bleeding’s under control, but I’m not hiking all the way back out like this.”

When Chin says, “Fuck,” it’s with enough feeling that Danny can hear that.

Danny waits patiently, watching Steve’s tremors grow, and listens as Steve talks extraction with some Army big-shot. There’s a lot of staring at the map they brought, and Danny watches as Steve plots out their path. All roads to a safe helicopter rescue seem too far from their current position to be feasible on Steve’s leg, but nonetheless Steve agrees to one.

The extraction point they decide on is over a mile away from their current position, and they agree to be there in five hours. Danny isn’t sure they’re gonna make it, but there’s nothing to say, because like it or not it’s the closest and most accessible. So he loops an arm around Steve’s ribs and pulls him up. 

*****

Steve doesn’t actually think they’ll make the extraction at this pace. Hell, he’s not sure they’re going to make it at any pace. The muscles in his leg are too badly torn to carry him up and over too many more ridges like the one they’re on now. And they may be going a mile to their designated location, but that doesn’t take into account the topography. It’ll be closer to two. 

If he’s lucky, Steve can convince Danny to go on ahead and bring the medics back to him on foot. Maybe they can carry him to a safe evacuation point. 

But even if his leg holds up, Steve knows he’s dropping hard. The pain from the gunshot wound has thrown him all out of level, and he used up his current store of endorphins just to get them into their hiding spot. Now there’s nothing left to fight the pain and, he’s just moving on stubbornness and years of practice of fighting through a drop. 

It’s probably seventy degrees, but Steve’s freezing, his whole body shaking as his nervous system begins to misfire, the neurotransmitters he needs to get his body to cooperate nearly depleted. All of which is only exacerbated by blood loss. He leans closer onto Danny, soaking up his warmth.

“Okay, you’re gonna sit down for a minute,” Danny says. 

It doesn’t seem that Steve has much choice because Danny lowers him to the ground at the base of a tree and Steve slumps without Danny to hold him up. Fuck, he already misses being pressed against Danny’s side.

Danny kneels to check the bandage on Steve’s leg and asks, “Now, you’re going to be honest with me because I cannot carry you out of here anymore than I already am: are you dropping or is the shaking from the pain?” 

Steve hisses as Danny presses on his thigh and shifts himself to sit up a little straighter. “Both. Mostly the drop.”

Danny nods and withdraws his hands from Steve’s leg. Again, Steve misses the contact and he barely stifles a whine. He needs Danny’s hands on him to ground him. Danny should know that.

“Oh, okay there, pal. I’m not going anywhere,” Danny says, and suddenly his hand is in Steve’s.

Steve breathes out slow and lets his eyes slip closed. “Put me down, Danno. I won’t make it out if you don’t.”

“Okay, okay, Steve. I can do that. What gets you down easiest?” Danny asks.

He skims a hand up and down Steve’s arm, and Steve sighs. Right now, Steve thinks that anything Danny does will probably get him down pretty fast. 

“Alright, well let’s try this then,” Danny murmurs, Steve apparently having waited too long to answer. His hand is warm on the back of Steve’s neck. Steve lets himself melt into the firm grip, lets go of the tightly wound control that he’s been clinging to. 

As his breathing slows, from the harsh, shallow sips of air he’s been taking to something fuller and deeper, Danny gives his neck a little squeeze. “That’s it, Steve. You’re doing so good for me. Just relax.”

It’s easy to forget how much tension he carries on a normal day; add to that the pain he’s in and relaxing feels like he’s coming apart. Steve shudders the length of his body; bolts of pain shoot through his leg, but only for a moment, before the tension holding his injury stable releases. Then the only things keeping him tethered to the here and now are Danny’s hand and the pain in his right thigh. Another time, if the pain were less, Steve could fall asleep like this. As it is, he drifts, focusing as much as he can on the feel of Danny’s hand and letting his nervous system reset as his hormones kick endorphin and neurotransmitter production into overdrive. 

“How are you doing, babe?” Danny asks.

Steve hums, the pleasure of Danny calling him “babe” zinging down his spine. 

“Gonna need words, Steve,” Danny says. He loosens his grip on Steve’s neck and he whines with the loss, the reprobation enough to make him a little more aware of his surroundings.

“‘M good, Danno,” he slurs.

The hand tightens again and Steve sighs contentedly. 

“Open your eyes for me, babe,” Danny orders and Steve complies without thinking. The light filtering down through the trees is dim, but to Steve’s eyes it’s blinding. “Damn, your eyes. Okay, you’re real far down there. Let’s see if we can’t bring you back up a bit. We’re not going all the way yet, just want you a little more with it. Sound good?”

Steve nods, and as a reward Danny pats his arm.

“For starters, I want you to recite your Army alphabet. Start from alpha.”

“NATO phonetic alphabet, Danny,” Steve corrects dizzily. Now that his eyes are open, the sensation of floating has turned into the sensation of being drunk. Now that he’s going down, instead of dropping, his brain is short-circuiting on the sudden influx of neurotransmitters. He tries to focus on a tree in front of him but it keeps listing to the left. Eventually it goes so far over his eyes can’t follow and he’s forced to look back to center, only for the tree to start falling sideways again. 

Danny’s hand comes off the back of Steve’s neck entirely, and Steve’s breath leaves him in a sudden rush. Steve puts his hands out on the ground and does his best not to keel over with the tree. Why did Danny let go? Things were good. Danny was touching him, Steve was floating, he was being _good._

Danny snaps his fingers in front of Steve’s face. “Hey, focus. NATO phonetic alphabet, Steven. You wanna be good for me don’t you?”

Steve nods hard, the forest spinning in front of him. “‘M good, Danno. I’m gonna be good. Alpha, bravo, charlie…”

Steve knows the alphabet like the back of his hand, and he runs through it in just over a minute. By the time he rattles off “x-ray, yankee, zulu” the forest is mostly stationary and he’s able to stay upright. But most importantly, Steve has earned back Danny’s hand on the back of his neck. He hums little noises of pleasure under his breath when Danny squeezes and strokes his thumb right along Steve’s hairline.

“How are you feeling now?” Danny asks. Somewhere between where they started and where they are now, Danny shifted from cautious to confident. Steve could melt into Danny right about now because Danny taking control is probably one of the best things Steve can remember.

“‘M good,” Steve mumbles. He’s not disoriented anymore; he’s just exhausted from the drop and the gunshot wound. 

“How far down are you?”

“‘Bout halfway. Not too far,” Steve answers.

“Up enough to head to the extraction point?” Danny asks, but to Steve it sounds like a command.

He nods. “Yessir. I think I can walk now.”

Danny pats him on the shoulder and holds Steve’s canteen to his lips. “Drink a little and then we’ll go. You’re being real good, Steve.”

_Only for you,_ he thinks.

*****

By the time that Steve gets his discharge papers, Danny’s back is in all kinds of knots from sleeping in that stupid fold out chair that passes for a bed. He listens intently to the nurse as she goes over the instructions for wound care and post-surgical drop. Steve seems fine for the moment, but Danny also knows that Steve’s been getting steadily dosed with synthetic hormones and neurotransmitters for the duration of his hospital stay. Steve’s relaxed and frighteningly compliant demeanor probably has a shelf-life of forty-eight hours before another drop sets in.

Once the nurse finishes her spiel, she leaves all of the paperwork, including an appointment card for a dynamic services clinic, in a folder on the rolling tray. It’s only the work of a couple minutes to get Steve changed out of his gown and into some civvies, and then they’re off towards the car with Steve riding along in a wheelchair for once. 

But the compliance wears off once they get home.

“Here, take these with your lunch,” Danny says setting a handful of pills down beside Steve’s plate of garlic shrimp, home-delivered courtesy of Kamekona.

Steve stares at the pills and carefully picks out the antibiotics and steroids, leaving the painkillers on the table.

“Steven…” Danny starts.

“I hate taking them, Danny. They make me nauseated and my head gets all fuzzy. I just want to eat something without feeling like I’m gonna throw it up, okay?”

Danny sighs. After years of listening to doctors rattle on about the opiate crisis during weekly briefings and at seminars, Danny knows that, at least in the short-term, rotating tylenol and ibuprofen should do as well as morphine for all but the worst of the pain. Knowing that there’s an option Steve can use, and knowing why he hates the pain pills, Danny can’t help but acquiesce. 

“Fine, but you’ll take the stuff I get from your medicine cabinet. You hear me?”

Steve nods and smiles weakly. “Thanks, Danny.” 

And much to Danny’s surprise, Steve does take the proffered ibuprofen. But then he also hobbles around the house and half the backyard for the better part of the afternoon, and no amount of trying to corral him has any effect because Steve doesn’t sit still for more than five minutes at a time. 

By dinner, Steve’s looking a little pale and he’s not smiling anymore. It’s taken Danny a while to get Steve figured out, because he doesn’t show his emotions like most people. But now that Danny’s watching he can see it — not only will Steve not sit still, if he does sit at all, his good leg is bouncing a million miles an hour, his fingertips drum out little one-two-three-four patterns on the table — or if he’s walking then he’s tapping on his thigh, and he’s making little half-aborted scratching motions, like he wants to go after a bug bite but thinks better of it before his hand gets there. It’s anxiety and Danny knows it well, even if Danny’s anxiety isn’t the first symptom of drop. All the same, he keeps his mouth shut until he forces Steve to sit for dinner and a round of tylenol. 

Danny waits until Steve has a forkful of potato salad, his knuckles white with how hard he’s holding it. “So when do you want me to call the clinic? Tonight or first thing tomorrow?”

Steve looks up like Danny’s startled him, and maybe he has, but then he shakes his head. “I’ve got that follow up appointment in a couple days. I’ll be fine.”

Danny laughs bitterly and Steve actually flinches which is a testament to just how far out of hand this already is. “In couple days you’ll be back in the hospital from having a seizure on the kitchen floor. Is that your plan? Have I not spent enough time in shitty, folding hospital chairs recently? Are you trying to get killed because I distinctly recall there were people who were willing to do that for you not a week ago. Why did we have to go through all of this, just so you could fuck up your health again? Huh? Steve, I’m talking to you, answer me!”

But when Danny pauses in his rant he notices something. Steve has gone still, the fork barely still held between his fingers. He’s breathing easier and all of the anxious little tics he had just a moment ago are gone. Steve has settled.

Huh. 

Not only has Steve settled, Danny realizes, but the only thing that’s changed since they sat down are that Danny has yelled at Steve. Well, that and a few mouthfuls of potato salad, but that’s hardly a standard treatment for drop. Which leaves the yelling. 

Danny takes a bite of his chicken and thinks while he watches Steve go back to eating. Danny knows that something like this isn’t likely to be a unique occurrence, so he begins to think about the times he yells at Steve. There are times when he yells at Steve for taking unnecessary risks, which constitute about half of their arguments. The other half seem to occur when Steve provokes Danny — arguing with Danny when they’re under stress mostly, correcting him over something meaningless, doing something reckless _and_ pointless just to get Danny’s hackles up. Times when Steve would be in danger of a drop once the adrenaline faded. 

Realization hits Danny like a Mac truck — Steve used him. And sure, Danny has often wanted to be involved with Steve and his dynamic needs, Danny finds that being no more than a quick way to get level isn’t exactly flattering. 

“You could have just asked,” Danny says flatly as he rather forcefully stabs at his salad. 

“Hmm?” Steve asks, his fork hand suddenly pausing, though without the anxious tension of before. 

Danny drops his fork to this plate with a clatter. “You’ve been doing this the entire time, riling me up just to yell at you so you could go down. That’s what this is, isn’t it? How many times have you seen someone to put you down since that first time you dropped after your dad?”

Steve looks at his plate. “I haven’t.”

“It is so, _so_ tempting to yell at you right now, but I will not because that’s just giving you what you want. Instead, we are going to talk about this like adults.” Danny pauses but Steve just stares dejectedly at his plate, refusing to make eye contact. “Steven, are you refusing to talk to me about how you’ve been using me for the entirety of our friendship because I’m pretty sure that you owe me this conversation.”

Steve swallows and nods like a man condemned. “I’m sorry, Danny. I- I don’t know how to make this right. I never should have let you- I should have gone to a clinic. You’re up for your sergeant’s exam; if you wanna take that and go back to HPD-”

Danny sighs because he’s not as mad as Steve seems to think. “For as much as everyone calls me the dramatic one, you’re being pretty damn histrionic. I’m not gonna just quit 5-0 because you were stupid. If stupid was a reason to quit, I’d have left right after you tried to press-gang me.”

Surprisingly, Steve doesn’t latch on to the one Navy-related term Danny has ever thrown his way. “I don’t know why you’re not ready to quit. You’re not into men and I’ve been-”

“Are you actually trying to tell me who I am and am not into? Did those words actually just leave your neanderthal mouth, Steven?”

“I- uh- well I meant-” Steve stammers.

Finally, Danny has mercy on Steve’s idiocy. “I am mostly into women, but not exclusively. Also, if you want me to put you down, you could just ask, like a normal person.” Danny takes a bite of salad and waits but Steve doesn’t say anything. “This is the part where you say, ‘Danny, would you mind helping me with my drop?”

“Danny,” Steve’s voice sounds like a cheese grater being rubbed over concrete, “would you mind helping me with my drop?”

Danny smiles at Steve in reward. “Sure, I will. Now, the most important part of this is _how_ you want me to put you down. I know you’ve probably had assigned doms in the Navy; I had a work-partner in Newark who was a sub. So are you looking for something professional, something between colleagues, or are you maybe fishing for something more?”

Steve works his jaw like Danny’s only seen him do once before when someone had a gun pressed to the base of his skull. “Just as friends.”

“Wow, you are a terrible liar.”

Steve’s jaw locks and the very tips of his ears go red. Danny can’t help but chuckle. “Steven, who else do I call ‘babe’?”

“Just me,” Steve answers softly.

“Right. And did you think maybe there’s a reason for it?”

“Because you’re a possessive asshole?” Steve answers sounding a little less dejected.

Danny laughs again. “No. No, that’s you.” A small smile begins to play at the corners of Steve’s mouth and Danny can practically see Steve’s brain click into gear as he cottons onto what Danny’s getting at.

“So we’re both idiots?” Steve asks as he goes back to his food.

“You more so than me, obviously-”

“Obviously,” Steve agrees, sounding amused around forkful of chicken.

“But yes, I think it’s safe to say that we’ve both been idiots about this.”

“I’m marking it on my calendar: The day Danny Williams admitted to being an idiot,” Steve says, clearly over his earlier crisis and back to his regularly scheduled playful cockiness, or at least a decent facsimile thereof.

“Don’t push your luck; I’ll find a way to put you down with chores,” Danny threatens. It’s idle and both he and Steve know it, but Steve grins and ducks his head in a display of submission that Danny doubts is even remotely genuine, though he appreciates it all the same.

“That’s more like it,” Danny says, and Steve snorts, his posture already back to its normal upright ninja-super-SEAL-ness.

They finish their dinner in anticipatory silence. Steve looks ready in the same way he looks _ready_ when he’s got an idea that he knows is crazy, reckless, and probably gonna give Danny a stroke. Danny can’t help but smile.

When their food is gone, Steve tries to get up to take his empty plate to the kitchen. Danny narrows his eyes and points at the chair. “Sit there and wait. Prop your leg up if it’ll help with the pain,” he orders. 

Unlike normal — when Danny yells at Steve for being stupid or taking risks, when he’s just flinging advice at Steve and hoping something will stick — he doesn’t have that same foreboding feeling of just watching and waiting for the inevitable. Instead, when Danny tells him what to do, he’s confident that Steve will listen. 

“Yes, Danny,” he answers, and leans back in his chair.

Danny smiles to himself, savoring the first time something like that has ever succeeded. By the time that Danny comes back from the kitchen, Steve’s entire body is relaxed. Steve looks like he did when he was in the hospital all hopped up on pain meds and synthetics.

“Come on, babe,” Danny says softly and Steve carefully eases himself up to follow along.

Danny easily beats Steve to the sofa and arranges a few throw pillows on the floor. He offers Steve a hand down, which he accepts, and then Danny positions himself on the sofa behind Steve. There’s some shifting around, and then Danny puts his hand on the back of Steve’s neck. Instantly, Steve relaxes into Danny’s hand, his weight heavy against the sofa between Danny’s legs. 

“You’ve wanted this for a long time, huh?”

Steve nods and hums his agreement, and Danny can’t help but say, “Me too, babe. Me too.”

Danny feels his focus narrow down to Steve — the way he breathes, the tension he’s still holding in his leg around his wound, the way Steve’s pulse slows and evens out under Danny’s hand. He’s wanted to go up with Steve like this for so long and finally, _finally_ here they are. There’s no emergency, no last resort, no need to pretend that they don’t enjoy doing _this_ together. 

“Orders?” Steve whispers, breaking Danny’s revelatory moment.

“Later. I just wanna sit here like this with you for now.”

Steve nods, lightly jostling Danny’s arm. 

Later, there will be orders. Later, Danny will put Steve so far down he’ll be half the night coming back up. Later, when they get to sex, Danny will get to watch Steve come the hell apart after teasing him for hours on end. But that’s later. Right now they’re tired, and Steve is still wounded. It can wait. Because there’s Danny and there’s Steve, and they have all the time in the world to get this right.


End file.
